The question is what message about guns Democrats – and Republicans, for that matter – decide to take out of next year’s midterms. If action is taken this year and a bunch of incumbent Democratic senators from pro-gun states lose their seats next year, the party will likely conclude that the renewed gun control push was the reason; a new round of post-’14 reforms would be unlikely. But what if new laws are passed this year and most or all of those Democratic incumbents survive? And if the same thing happens at the House level? Or if some anti-gun control Republicans from swing districts are voted out? Under that scenario, Democrats might emerge from the ’14 midterms emboldened to press for more new laws, and Republicans from competitive districts might believe there’s no choice but to go along.

There’s a lot of bluffing that goes on in politics. What Biden, Obama and the far-left that now controls the Democratic Party is counting on is that NRA has been bluffing for years, and doesn’t really hold any cards. They are calling what they think is a bluff. It is way too early at this point to know what the 2014 election is going to look like for us, but if two years from now, friendly lawmakers have held the line, we need to work like hell, to do some positive reinforcement, for a change, to keep those lawmakers in office who helped hold that line, and be seen as a vital constituency in their coalition.

If by “see how that turned out” you mean “3 million GOP voters stayed at home because they were severely underwhelmed by Romney,” well this isn’t a Presidential election cycle – O’s eternal campaigning notwithstanding.

So did a lot of other righty groups. And I’ll echo what another commenter said. For gun owners the top of the ticket was not inspiring, and 4 years of Obama didn’t seem all that bad to a lot of gun people who don’t pay close attention.

I’ll state for the record that I believe our current wounds are self-inflicted. I heard to many gun owners who were delusional enough to believe and publicly state that they didn’t consider Obamanation a threat. All because he hadn’t done anything against gun rights in his first term. Despite all attempts to convince them otherwise, they clung on to that belief and now we all pay the price.

Don’t forget the huge pile of Obama voters who stay home when he’s not on the ticket. I sincerely hope there’s never another man who inspires the ignorant to flock to the polls like him.

Secondarily I believe there’s far more economic troubles headed our way between now and 2014 that’s going to smack the guys in charge like a ton of bricks. They’ve gotten 90% of what they wanted, the end result will be more misery and they’ll own it because it happened on their watch….

I’ve seen plenty of gun confiscation cheerleaders in waiting sending forth supporting gushes for ever more LEADERS. I have no reason to think that the issue is any more popular here in America than it ever has been. Methings that they are throwing ever more chaff into the air into persuading Joe and Sally America into believing that gun regulation has popular support. After all if Joe America never sees peaceful gun owners showing up at state houses nationwide then it likely never happened.

I think the mistake the Democrats are making is the same one too many of us make — thinking that the NRA and only the NRA is the sum total of the RKBA movement. We’re not, and I for one would say if it were, we’d be in damn big trouble.

As an NRA member for fifty years, and a Life Member for forty years, it has yet been years since I’ve paid attention to NRA endorsements, orange-cards, etc. And I think the fact that many people don’t, is what the Democrats are detecting. But the mistake they’re making is thinking that translates into meaning we don’t care about the issue, when the fact is many of us care way too much to listen to the NRA with its often dubious motives. Once the lines are laid down clearly and unambiguously, we don’t need an NRA or a GOA or an SAF or a NAGR to tell us what to do. And that will probably surprise the Democrats, again, because they have been believing their own bullshit that the gun rights movement is a monolith called the NRA, that has everyone who ever pulled a trigger dancing on its strings.